House freshmen, once outsiders, now insiders

FILE -- Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) greets supporters before a debate with his Democratic challenger, Cheri Bustos, in Moline, Ill., Oct. 11, 2012. Schilling won his seat in 2010 on a demand for change in Washington and now finds himself an incumbent, hearing similar language from his opponent.

Photo: BORRIS DANIEL, New York Times

MOLINE, Ill. — Congressional incumbency has its blessings, but in so many ways it was easier for Rep. Bobby Schilling to run for the House two years ago, when he was slinging dough at his family's pizza place and tossing around barbs about Washington in his bid to be the first Republican to represent his corner of Illinois in a generation.

Now the outsider is the insider, forced to defend the capital he ran against two years ago, as well as colleagues whose ideas he might not agree with and some positions on bills that he now regrets.

“There isn't a button that says ‘I'm not sure,'” Schilling said recently, discussing two years of votes, many of them difficult. Those have culminated in the record Schilling is running on against a Democrat whose turn it is to rail against the dysfunction of Congress.

Schilling's opponent, Cheri Bustos, attacked him during a recent debate on a vote to raise the nation's debt ceiling that would set off huge automatic spending cuts next year.

“I think it was a dangerous vote,” she said. “I think it was an irresponsible vote, and I think it's time to take ownership for it.”

Bustos would not say if she would vote to raise the debt ceiling; that is the joy of being the challenger that Schilling knew just two years ago.

“The good part about being on the other side,” Schilling said, “is that I have to work my tail off representing the people and show them who you are. They're trying to paint me as a right-wing tea partier. I'm right in the middle.”

That statement is a far climb from ones Schilling made in 2010. “I'm on with the tea party movement,” he told a radio interviewer. “They're good solid people who've said enough is enough.”

But incumbents learn what challengers mock — that to keep an office in Washington one has to adjust.

Schilling is one of 87 Republicans elected in 2010, a great many conservative newcomers now wearing the badge of incumbency they so scorned.

Schilling said Washington's partisanship had been one of life's greatest disappointments.

“My vision going out there versus what actually happened was frustrating,” he said. “I knew we wouldn't be able to fix everything as freshmen, but you just go in with higher expectations.”